新世紀エヴァンゲリオン S1

There's lots to appreciate, but also lots to be frustrated by. For some this is an unparalleled masterpiece, for others it will be pure torture or uninteresting at best. While I loved it 20 years ago, I knew there was a good chance I'd dislike it now, going in. You should probably take this review with a grain of salt.

Overall: The show starts off with an entirely ridiculous premise of these technologically wondrous mechs - that only extremely rare 14 year olds can pilot - being the only thing preventing the Earth's destruction by overwhelmingly powerful aliens (aka Angels). So the world stands on the shoulders of 2 traumatized 14 years old, with no psychological or emotional support structure, and you just have to take that as a given.

The first 1/3rd is a mix of slice of life + the Angels attacking Tokyo. Things are bland and dreary through most of this, but just interesting enough to keep you going. Around ep 8-9 a new archetypal ツンデレ character is introduced to spice things up. About halfway through, the characters have started coming out of their shell more, and the background plot starts to progressively thicken. It's the last 1/3rd that the show is really known for - things take a very abstract, introspective bent, aiming for the mystique and profound. I found the first half or so really easy to binge, and the last 1/3rd absolutely agonizing.

What I enjoyed: While there were things I enjoyed, I overall hated the show. To the show's credit, most characters are easy enough to enjoy and sympathize with (even if initially uninspiring). For me, the most enjoyable part was watching their relationships and development. The show also makes great use of cliffhangers and musical score. Also the OP is fantastic!!

What prevented me from enjoying more: To be fair, I watched the show at a time when it was above my level, and there are some things I didn't quite fully grasp b/c of that. There's a lot of very technical vocab related to combat, the EVA units, etc, and a decent amount of background plot went over my head. In the latter portion, there's also frequent use of quickly flashed text across the screen. If I had stopped to lookup and study those, I might have appreciated certain parts more. There's also so much suspension of disbelief required at times. To the extent that I got it, I'm not really into a lot of the imagery used in the show - but that's just personal taste.

What I hated: Either way, the thing that made me hate the show is the storytelling methods used. There's a lot of times where you're stuck inside the character's heads for prolonged durations (up to an entire episode), while they're having experiencing some sort of breakdown, crisis, psychological manipulation, etc. This is often done through looping dialogue and imagery, which got very grating for me. You see the characters going through some really traumatic stuff over and over again. If it were an episode or two I could deal with it, but there's at least 6-8 episodes with this sort of thing in the show overall. Even outside of that, sometimes there's scenes where you were stuck on the same still frame for at least 30-60s... some of them even with no dialogue. I also didn't really care for the repeatedly interjected soundtrack (parts of Hallelujah chorus and Ode to Joy) in the last 1/3rd. Personally I didn't really care for whatever questions the show was trying to ask, examine, etc, by the end. I couldn't bring myself to finish the last two eps... but there's a reason End of Evangelion was made. I did go back and finish them, and prefer them over the End of Evangelion movie.

Conclusion: If you like (or don't mind) really heavy, messed up, dark, character-driven shows where the characters suffer a lot, and there's lots of inner turmoil, and there's a mix of introspection, attempts at deep/meaningful philosophy, pseudo-Christian/angelic imagery, etc, the show might be for you. If not, you might want to skip it, unless you really want to watch it for the purpose of cultural literacy. If you do watch it, I'd recommend pacing yourself and taking breaks through the last 1/3rd of the series.